


How can I tell you're here the way you are?

by PurplishProse (BalthazarB)



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Supernatural Elements, Well - Freeform, one ghost, theres ghosts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 21:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11722584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BalthazarB/pseuds/PurplishProse
Summary: "Hey girl," she mumbled, trying to calm the cat, stepping forwards and kneeling down to stretch out a hand. It passed through something thick, something cold, and Nicole gasped as a shiver raced up her body, nerves tightening like rubber bands pulled taut. That wasn’t normal. That was a very bad sign, actually.***Nicole moves into the small town of purgatory for a new job. Unfortunately, it's hard to impress your boss with terrible coworkers, random women knocking at your door at three in the morning, and an invisible roommate who keeps breaking glasses.Because she's pretty sure her house is haunted, and she's never been a fan of horror.





	How can I tell you're here the way you are?

Moving alone had been tough. Nicole had sealed what little was left of her life into little white boxes, closed them up, and left behind everything she had ever known.  There wasn’t much to leave, if she was honest. Her relationship with her parents was nothing more than cordial after she came out, and her brother was long gone, still skyping her from cities far away.

 

That wouldn’t change if she accepted that job offer she'd got.

 

So she showed up, Stetson placed firmly atop her brow, and tried to impress Nedley with her near encyclopedic knowledge of everything an officer of the law would ever have to know.

 

Posture straight, top three buttons of her shirt done up, hair tied back so tight a headache crept through the strands.

 

(She got the job.)

 

***  
 

The apartment was small, drafty, and covered in suspicious stains that crept across floorboards and through the peeling wallpaper. A corner of the carpeted floor curled upward, revealing the rotting wood underneath.

 

"At least it's cheap." she said softly, her cat chirruping quietly in response.

 

Then she set about making herself a bowl of cup noodles, watching the oil bubblets float aimlessly on the surface. They were good, if a little overcooked.

 

She set about exploring soon after that, Calamity following behind her with her tail pointing up.

 

The kitchen she'd seen, white tiles shining under fluorescent lights, empty fan hole carved in the window. Thank god it was summertime, she thought, imagining the icy breeze creeping into the apartment.

 

The lounge was much the same, small, empty, and cold.

 

When she headed for the bedroom, though, opening the door slowly, Calamity reacted.

 

Ears down flat, tail bushy, low to the ground and rumbling manically. The slits of her pupils narrowed, eyes focused on… what?

 

On nothing. The room was empty, apart from the bed it came with. Maybe something flickered, a movement in the air, and Nicole swore before tumbling backwards and into a wall.

 

Cool, she thought sarcastically.

 

She'd always hated ghost stories.

 

***

 

Mail came through the slot the next morning while she called her brother, hitting the floor with a thick slap that startled Calamity, who ran headfirst into an unpacked box.

 

Nicole snorted into the receiver.

 

"You've got mail!" her brother sang.

 

"I wouldn’t get so excited if I were you. It's probably bills."

 

Who was she kidding? It's always bills.

 

"Check it, I guess, if you don't want to pay attention to your loving brother, who called to check up on you out of the kindness of his heart."  
  
"I'm gonna have to do it out of spite now, dipshit."

 

"Ouch. You wound me."

 

She bent down to pick up the letters, paper cool to the touch, before flipping them over.

 

"Damn."  
  
"Bills?"  
  
"Nope. It's a letter. Not even for me, though. Must be whoever lived here last."  
  
"C'mon. Gimme the details, sis. Don't leave a guy hanging," he pleaded.

 

"Waverly Earp. Huh. Never heard that last name before," she replied, turning over the envelope in her hands carefully. It was from someone with the same last name, a Wynonna, sent from Greece.

 

"Open it! Who even sends real letters anymore. It's begging to be seen, Nic!"

 

"Nah, I'll ask the landlord for the old resident's new address. _Some_ people aren't insufferably nosy, Daniel."

 

"Boo. I have to go anyway, if I don't pick Amanda up at school she teenage mopes at me."

 

"Say hi from me!"

 

"Always do, sis."

 

The phone beeped, and she was alone.

 

Calamity sat, trembling, glaring at the air in front of Nicole.

 

"Hey girl," she mumbled, trying to calm the cat, stepping forwards and kneeling down to stretch out a hand. It passed through something thick, something cold, and Nicole gasped as a shiver raced up her body, nerves tightening like rubber bands pulled taut. That wasn’t normal. That was a very bad sign, actually.

 

Then, the counter shook, and a glass toppled off of it and onto the floor with a resounding crash. Glass skittered across the floor, reflecting light, glittering madly. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

 

Nicole took a breath to calm herself, willing her heart into silence. That was some pretty suspicious activity. Cat freaking out? Check. Cold spot of air? Check. Broken household item? Check.

 

But ghosts couldn’t be real. Ghosts were bullshit. Nicole was not going to start believing in ghosts out of nowhere.

 

At least, not without evidence.

 

She cleaned up the glass without trouble, sweeping the glimmering fragments into a dustpan with shaking hands. Then, she found Calamity, curled up and shivering in a corner with pitifully wide eyes. Poor girl, the move had been stressful enough for her as it was. Without… ghost bullshit.

 

"Fucking with me is one thing, asshole," she said to an empty apartment, "But my cat? _Really_?"

 

She felt stupid afterwards. Talking to an empty house. Her cheeks flushed, and she turned away, searching for the startled feline.

 

Then, She sat curled up with her cat on the couch, until they both fell asleep.

 

In the house, something watched.

 

Under the carpets, under the peeling wallpaper, bloodstains quivered upon the bare bones of a prison.

 

***

 

Nicole had had _enough._ Supernatural activity? Sure. Stepping on a stray piece of glass trying to get water in the night? Fucking dandy.

 

But somebody banging on her door at Fuck-O'clock in the morning?

 

She was about ready to snap.

 

She swung the door open so hard the hinges shifted, eyes red with lack of sleep.

 

On the other side was a woman.

 

Brown hair slightly curled, flowing down shoulders covered by a leather jacket, and eyebags so deep she looked like the walking dead. Her face was gaunt and drawn, paler than a plastic bag in the blue moonlight. A nearly empty plastic bottle of Jim Beams was clutched in her right hand, like a lifeline. She seemed, of all things, _surprised_.

 

Nicole took a steadying breath as the smell of liquor hit her. Teeth clenched, the words "It is _four_ in the morning, and I have _no idea_ who the _fuck_ you are," poured out of her mouth.

 

"Huh." said Very Good Facial Structure, taking another swig. "Same to you, Fire Hydrant."

 

Nicole slammed the door shut, and went back to bed.

 

***

 

The next day at work was tough. She limped through the linoleum halls, filing reports and carrying coffee, trying to down enough energy drinks to keep herself going through the day. The old lady at the desk was giving her side eye, and probably some front eye too, raising an eyebrow whenever she desperately tried to organize her desk.

 

Worst of all was _The Man_.

 

He was in a part of the office belonging to the 'Black Badge', catching sight of her at about 8:30 when he went to scrounge around for a cup of coffee. As soon as they met eyes, his brows coalesced into the middle of his forehead, making him look deeply perplexed.

 

"Hmm." he said out loud, to her face, as he stared at her over his novelty X mug.

 

That was not the issue.

 

The issue was that he would do the same thing every single time he left his office. Which was _frequently_.

 

There are only so many contemplative 'hmm's you can take, Nicole thought viciously at 2:00, watching as X-man junior took out his phone and nonchalantly took a photo of her.

 

Her pencil snapped, and the back half nearly decapitated a nicely shaped bonsai tree. Desk Lady tutted.

 

She got up, stiffly, before trying to confidently limp over to where he leaned on the coffee bench.

 

"Excuse me, sir, but I have to ask," she growled, "what is your _problem_?"

 

An eyebrow made the life-threatening decision to hike up his forehead. It moved with enough precision to make gymnasts envious. The rest of his face remained stony.

 

"Pardon, Officer?" he said, coolly.

 

There was a pause as he took a very slow slurp out of his mug.  This is it, Nicole thought. I'm going to murder someone on my first day on the job.  They'll arrest me, and I'll thank them. Anything would be better than this.

 

The slurp, against all odds, _continued_.

 

She was in hell. She was in hell, and it was called Purgatory.

 

"You. Just took a photo of me. If you do not delete it, I will-"

 

Shove your phone so hard up your ass the flash shines out your nostrils? Take that stupid mug and dump its contents on your person? Make you eat the stuffing of the chair in the waiting room? It was all _very_ tempting.

 

"-Be very upset. With you. As a person."

 

"Ouch. You really know how to wound a man."  
  
"Well. I had- I had a bad night's sleep, ok?"

 

His smirk grew, and the cup tilted, slowly and inevitably towards his face. It was like watching a volcano erupt; powerful and inevitable, the slurp echoing around the bullpen like the brass section in an experemental indie album.

 

She was one ill timed sip away from grabbing a shovel and digging her own grave in the dirt outside the station.

 

"A bad night's sleep, Officer? What would that entail?"

 

Nicole walked back over to her desk and groaned audibly into the paperwork.

 

Dolls, as his nametag read, snickered.

 

***

 

When she came home, she gently placed her bag by the door, locked it, and then slumped face down onto the carpet to make muffled pained noises. Calamity, ever the opportunist, settled gently onto her ass to snooze.

 

Damn cat.

 

She had been here not even a week, and so far, it was a nightmare. It was like the universe had crafted a city full of Nicole's least favourite things, and made sure she was whirled right into the centre of it. All she had now was a cat with nervous tendencies, a brother over twelve hours drive away, and a haunted apartment.

 

She lay there for about an hour, letting Calamity migrate slowly up her back before she started absentmindedly grooming Nicole's hair.

 

Then, there was a sound.

 

It was a scratching sound, something sharp against something soft, slow and precise and deafening in the silence.  Calamity dug her claws into Nicole and she yelped, throwing the cat off of her. The sound stopped and something rolled off the nearby table to land heavily on the floor.

 

It was a pen.

 

She got up, slowly, carefully, her movements soft like she was trying not to startle a wild animal.

 

On the table was the letter addressed to the person who lived here last, unopened.

 

But in shaky, capital letters lay a single word, fresh ink glinting in the indoor lighting:

 

SORRY

 

"Oh." Nicole said to an empty house.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i also have a fun werewolf fic on the go if you wanna check that out. but seriously, thanks for reading, i couldnt get this idea out of my head so i?? wrote it down instead. no beta, so if u see a mistake, please point it out! comments and kudos are always appreciated, and i have a basic idea of what the plot is gonna be, so don't you worry. Waves doesnt feature much so far, but she will in the future!
> 
> also i know dolls seems like kinda an ass so far but he has His Reasons. he's tryna protect his friends. i love him i swear.
> 
> find me on tumblr at http://lesbianesques.tumblr.com/.
> 
> song and chap titles are from protest song by broken social scene, because im a hipster who only listens to songs written on slips of paper and shoved through my mail slot at midnight.


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